Cards on the table: as an on-the-run-for-a-crime-he-didn't-commit novel, Being ticks all the right boxes. One wouldn't expect any less from Kevin Brooks, as he is a consistently good writer. If he doesn't always pull off everything he attempts, it's because he takes risks, and that's what makes him such an interesting voice in contemporary children's fiction. His previous book, The Road of the Dead, dealt with violence and retribution in a highly original and disturbing fashion, with a plot device that made one view the ghastly realism through an intriguing perspective. His earlier novels have been equally thought-provoking in their different ways.

With that pedigree in mind, Being - Brooks's first novel for Penguin - has much to live up to. I suspect many a potential reader has been fed a film and television diet of the wrongly accused on the run. You know the sort: adventures where, more often than not, the pursuers are those who framed the protagonist in the first place or, worse still, have committed the crime they're publicly accusing him of. Brooks does this exceedingly well. He builds up the sympathy for his fugitive, Robert, cranks up the tension and paints his characters with consummate skill. In this respect, I've little doubt that he achieved everything he set out to do.

The fact that the hero on the run is under 18 adds an interesting dimension: checking into hotels and finding modes of transport are that much harder than for an adult fugitive (though a pre-"chip-and-pin"-age setting helps). Strangely, though, the end result is almost too slick. It reads like a well-written thriller, but a thriller covering well-trodden ground. And here's the dilemma. Brooks does it well, but why is he doing it in the first place?

The answer to this could lie in the second strand of the novel, which takes it into different realms. The story begins when Robert's safe little world is shattered. On going in for a routine endoscopy at his local hospital, he discovers that what he feels and appears to be is not what he actually is on the inside. He's not like other people. In truth, he may not even be a person. In parallel to the flight from the authorities, then, this is a book about identity and wondering how much what we think we are actually makes us what we are, beyond how people perceive us. This is, of course, territory famously explored in Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or, more accurately, the film take on the story, which is Blade Runner.

Again, Brooks handles this expertly and, not only that, he meshes the two strands of the book very nicely indeed. Perhaps the novel will have particular appeal to a readership of an age when they're trying to discover who they are and where they fit into society.

Because of the author, I was expecting something edgier and more intense. Had Being been the work of a new writer, I'd be singing its praises - though, sadly, not necessarily in print. As it is, I've come to expect a further dimension from Brooks which, for me, this book doesn't deliver. But there's nothing wrong with going more mass market and, if it hooks in new Brooks fans who then go on to read his earlier work, all the better.

· Philip Ardagh's Final Curtain, the third and final of The Further Adventures of Eddie Dickens, is published in paperback by Faber in May